His Last Bark
by AStarr
Summary: My tribute and retelling of the last moments of the character whose life ended in Order of the Phoenix. Warning: Book 5 Spoilers.


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This is my tribute to the wonderful character of Sirius Black, my favourite canon character.

His Last Bark

A tall man stood, dried Hippogriff blood on his fingers from having just fixed Buckbeak's injuries, moodily staring at the object he hated most out of all objects in his cursed family home. He brushed his long black hair from his face impatiently from his face, to reveal a face that had once been handsome, and could still be handsome, despite the permanently gaunt, tense and taut expression.

The object of his attention sat, pretentiously proud, glued to the wall with a Permanent Sticking Charm. The tapestry of "The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black."

Sirius gave a short, cynical bark of laughter. Most Ancient, yes. Noble, never.

His eyes drifted to the family motto underneath. "Toujours pur." _Always pure_. No, he thought with satisfaction. Not always pure. It was merely a fiction his family had tried to maintain. The occasional black burn marks where his name should be, or his uncle, or his cousin Andromeda, were clear evidence of that.

He sighed. Why did he have to have been born into a family like his? A twisted, dark and bigoted family filled to the brim with arrogant prejudices.

Sirius scanned the names on the family tree detachedly. Phineas Nigellus, Narcissa Malfoy, his parents … his past, people that he despised. He could not even bear the sight of them, yet here he was, trapped inside a house which reeked of his family.

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Bellatrix Lestrange …

The skin near Sirius' black eyes tightened, and his mouth settled into a grim line when he read his cousin's name on the tapestry.

He hated her with a passion. His other cousin, Narcissa had been an air-headed fool – irritating, but never dangerous. Annoying, but never managing to get under Sirius' skin. Bellatrix, on the other hand, was a person he loathed even more than Severus Snape.

'_You're pathetic, Sirius …_'

He could remember her hissing taunts at Christmas dinner when he had been fifteen.

'_You're the disgrace of the family. A complete loser, with friends like that Potter kid.'_

The biting words he had tried to refrain from retorting to before his family.

'_Can't you do a little better?_'

Her triumphant cry when he fell, downed by her Impediment Jinx, after he challenged her to a duel after the Christmas dinner.

Sirius gritted his teeth at the mere memory of Bellatrix. Spiteful, cruel, and most disturbingly, powerful. The pupil of Lord Voldemort himself, his mouth twisted at the thought.

It was easy to see why people had thought that he, related by blood to Bellatrix Lestrange, was also a murderer.

'_Can't you do a little better than that …_'

Her mocking voice continued to ring in his head, and he scowled darkly, knowing too well that his cousin had escaped from Azkaban. He tried to tear off the tapestry, tried to rid his mind of his family, but it remained firmly stuck, and helplessly, he stomped off to his room.

Sitting down on his bed, he pulled over a mirror. The mirror he told Harry to use.

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Why didn't he use it?

That thought weighed uncomfortably in his mind. Why did Harry refuse to speak to him except through the inconvenient means of the fire? He always reminded himself to remind Harry to use it, but he would forget. Foolish of him, he knew. Using the fire was no doubt dangerous.

Sirius wanted to live, to live normally. To be able to live in a home, with his godson, looking after Harry, who reminded him so much of James. Yet they were different, he knew too well. Harry had grown up so much quickly, had developed so much more rapidly than his father. And he had his mother's caution, which James never had. But underneath, they were close to the same. And Sirius, who had missed James for so long, now missed Harry terribly. They were the two people he had been closest to in his life.

'Sirius?'

A slight knock on his door.

Sirius opened the door quickly, eager for news. He hated being holed in, kept inactive while everybody around him worked for the Order. Snape was oh-so-careful to remind him of that. Any chance to do anything, he would leap at.

'Moony,' Sirius grinned to see his friend. The pale, grey-haired but young werewolf looked urgent.

'I've just heard from Severus,' Remus Lupin said, voice breathless as if he had been running. 'Harry's gone.'

'Gone?' Sirius asked, eyes widening in fear.

'Yes. Severus thinks he's gone to the Department of Mysteries. Alastor, Tonks, Kingsley and I are going right away,' Remus said briefly. 'Severus wants you to stay here.'

'What?' Sirius roared. 'Are you insane? I am not going to just sit here while Harry might be dying.'

'You have to,' Remus pleaded. 'Severus thinks you need –'

'Snape,' Sirius spat. 'Snivellus needs to be taught a thing or two!'

Remus continued unpreturbed. 'You need to stay and tell Dumbledore what has happened.'

'Kreacher can do that,' Sirius said curtly.

Remus shook his head. 'You cannot go out. You know Dumbledore doesn't want you dead.'

'I don't think I care anymore,' Sirius said with a bitter laugh.

'Harry cares.'

'And that's why I'm coming,' Sirius said, checking his wand was in his pocket. 'Let's go.'

Remus stared after his friend, but knew there was nothing he could do to stop him. Sirius was not the sort of person who would agree to sit behind. And besides, what harm coud it do?

***

'_Petrificus Totalus!_' Harry yelled at Antonin Dolohov, whose arms and legs snapped together. He keeled over backwards, landing unceremoniously on the floor.

Sirius grinned proudly, seeing his godson's quick reflexes and intiative. 'Nice one!' he shouted to Harry, and forced his head down as a pair of Stunning Spells darted through the air towards them. 'Now I want you to get out of –'

They both ducked again, as a jet of green light narrowly missed Sirius. Sirius narrowed his eyes, trying to find the direction of the curses, and his face grew worried.

Tonks was falling from stone seat to stone seat, and Bellatrix Lestrange stood, triumphantly running into the fray.

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Bellatrix …

'Harry, take the prophecy, grab Neville and run!' Sirius yelled, and immediately sprinted towards his cousin, wand out and ready. 'Bellatrix!' he shouted, fully ready to kill his cousin.

Bellatrix turned, saw him, and her heavily lidded eyes looked frightened for a moment, before she smiled cruelly. 'My dear little cousin!' she said, a delighted tone of voice ringing out, as she instantaneously shot out a curse with her wand.

Sirius deflected it. '_Stupefy!_' he roared, throwing a bolt of red light at Bellatrix.

She ducked, leaping from one stone step to the next. '_Crucio!_'

Sirius avoided it quickly, and jumped, leaping onto the same stone step as hers. He threw a curse at her, but she dodged, and for a moment, circled him on the stone step, tauntingly. 'Can't you do a little better than that?' she mocked him.

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Can't you do a little better than that?

Sirius snarled, and moved back into action. Curses, jinxes and hexes threw between them, and their wands moved so fast, they blurred. With an agility Sirius was astonished to find he still had after months of being confined in his family home, Sirius and Bellatrix leapt from step to step, higher, lower, careful never to fall, careful always to duck and deflect.

'_Crucio!_' Bellatrix cried out again, and Sirius threw himself into the air, miraculously landing on the dais to miss the bolt of red light that had come his way. Bellatrix jumped after him quickly, and tripped clumsily, as a curse skimmed past her chest.

He laughed as she fell to the floor of the dais.

'Come on, you can do better than that!' he yelled, his voice echoing around the cavernous room. He ducked an angry jet of red light from Bellatrix, as his wand pointed towards her. He was so angry, his vision was almost clouded, remembering everything – Bellatrix's taunts, and everything they represented. His family, the whole bigoted lot of them, frowning on him, frowning on his rebellion.

The second jet of light hit him squarely on the chest.

The laughter had not quite died from his face, but his eyes widened in shock …it seemed to take Sirius an age to fall: his body curved in a graceful arc as he sank backwards through the ragged veil hanging from the arch.

A look of mingled fear and surprise lingered on his face even as he fell through that ancient doorway, his eyes blank and unseeing, thoughts abruptly cut off. He disappeared through the veil, which fluttered for a moment as though in high wind, then fell back into place, accompanied by Bellatrix's triumphant scream.

'SIRIUS!'

***

The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black was cold, empty and silent. It had been cold, empty and silent for a long time, but now, it was even colder, emptier and more silent.

'Sirius Black!' an old, normally emotionless voice, called thinly in the corridors.

There was no answer to that call that continued for several minutes.

'Sirius Black!' the controlled voice cracked slightly. 'You were the last!' the feeble cry ended as the face left the portrait on the wall.

The emptiness of the House almost echoed.

Upstairs, a mirror lay on a bed.

'Sirius Black!' a voice, young, broken and frustrated, echoed just slightly through the glass, to dissolve in the silence, as the shadow of a face appeared in the mirror, used too late.

The glass shattered, cracking into pieces on the bed.

Sirius Black was gone forever.

~*~

Author's note: I was completely devastated to read that Sirius was killed by JKR (I was in tears) in the _Order of the Phoenix_, and so I had to write this little ficlet. However, I do believe he will not return, no matter how mysterious or unknown that veiled archway was. JKR would not have been crying when writing that chapter if she was planning to revive him.

I'd better disclaim, especially since a lot of phrases etc. were taken from _Order of the Phoenix_, published by Bloomsbury, written by JKR, and that everything Harry Potter related belongs to Warner Bros.


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